Homework Helper
by Alixtii
Summary: It began, innocently enough, with a very frustrated Dawn searching out Fred to help her with her calculus homework.


It began, innocently enough, with a very frustrated Dawn searching out Fred to help her with her calculus homework. Fred looked over Dawn's collection of problem sets, and her eyes lit up, as if just seeing the incomplete mathematical equations brought Fred some perverse pleasure. If she liked them so much, she should just wallpaper her room with them, Dawn thought.

Then she remembered Angel telling her about the times when Fred _had_.

"Okay," said Fred. "You just need to find the indefinite integral--the antiderivative, you know, the derivative's inverse operation."

Dawn just stared at the former physicist. "You make as much sense to me as my prof," she said. "I'd say it was all Greek to me, except I can actually _understand_ Greek."

So Fred explained it in terms Dawn could understand, by relating it to Sumerian numerology. A lot of the basic principles were the same, after all, and they were actually making quite good progress until they got derailed by a debate over whether mathematical platonism was the only tenable paradigm in which to perform S'hanargan mystic rituals.

Fred was the platonist, naturally. "You believe in the hell-god Kallemerith but not the number five?"

Dawn crossed her arms. "I've met a hell-god. Never ran into the number five, though. Is it heavy?"

Fred just sighed. "There are certain immutable laws to the universe which represent the true reality of--"

"If Buffy can't chop its head off, it's not real."

"Chop the head off of what? A bunch of leptons spinning around?" Fred bit on the end of her pen. "The substance is mutable; it's the equations which describe the supposed substance which act in predictable--"

Dawn just cut her off again. "Rules can be broken. Isn't that what magic is all about?"

"Oh, so you're going to just cast a spell and make 2 plus 2 equal 5?"

Dawn shrugged. "Why not? There's a spell that can do that, right, Wes?"

"Don't drag Wes into this," Fred snapped. "Any magic sufficiently understood is indistinguishable from technology."

"Oh, because you did such a good job calculating your way out of that hell dimension." Even as Dawn said it, she was sorry she went there.

Fred's mouth gaped open. "I was crazy!"

"Past tense?" Oh yeah, Dawn had to work on that not saying everything she thought thing. She was turning into Anya. Or worse: Cordelia.

"Fred?" Dawn stood in the threshold of Fred's room. "I'm . . . I want to say I'm sorry about what I said this afternoon."

Fred looked up at her with a hard-to-interpret gaze. "It's okay," she said.

"No," said Dawn. "I mean, really. It wasn't cool for me to question your mental health."

Fred shrugged. "It's better than tiptoeing around me. Dawn, I haven't had a fight like that since Charles and I--" She frowned, broke off. "In a long time. And an argument like that, over ideas? Not since before Pylea. Sure Wes could do it, but he won't push me that far, like he's afraid I'll break or something." She snorted, then got up walked over to Dawn. She put out a hand as if she were going to touch Dawn, then pulled it back. "I really enjoyed that fight today, Dawn," she said.

They stood about a foot from each other, neither woman saying anything but neither ready to turn away. Dawn breathed in. She knew Fred wasn't going to do anything, that if anything was going to happen she was going to have to initiate it--so she did, leaning in to kiss Fred.

Fred didn't lean in to meet her, but she didn't pull away either, and when Dawn's lips met hers she let her mouth slide open to make room for Dawn's tongue. They kissed for a moment, and it was Dawn who finally did so. "And being told you're crazy by someone who doesn't think numbers exist?" Fred pointed out, with a mischevious smile. "Not that troubling."

Dawn closed the door behind her. "Well, why don't we just open up a portal and travel to the Platonic heaven where they are?" she asked, pushing Fred gently back against the wall.

"Can't," Fred answered, unzipping Dawn's jeans. "You need five candles to cast the spell, and you don't think numbers exist."

"I can take part in the social convention," Dawn pointed out. She unbuttoned a button on Fred's blouse. "One. One button. See?" She unbuttoned another one. "Two. Two buttons." Another. "Three. Three buttons."

"Do we really need the Count von Count routine?" asked Fred. "You can count. I get it." She quickly undid the remaining buttons on her blouse and pulled it off, with her bra soon following.

"Ha ha ha!" Dawn finished, although disappointingly there was no lightning to accompany her. "I can count, and I don't even need some absurd metaphysics to do it."

"Oh, just shut up," Fred said, and quickly forced compliance by kissing Dawn.

"Damn," said Dawn, an hour later, as she lay sprawled across Fred's bed.

Fred turned to her. "What is it?"

"I still haven't finished my calc homework." 


End file.
